TORONTO (June
13, 2015) – As part
of CTV and TSN’s extensive slate of compelling original features from the FIFA
WOMEN’S WORLD CUP CANADA 2015™,TSN Senior Correspondent Rick
Westhead travels to
the favelas of Brazil to investigate the impact of soccer on a brave group of
young women. Their story is shared in the TSN Original: FAVELA UNITED,debuting during the pre-game show for Brazil vs. Spain, today (Saturday,
June 13) at 4 p.m. ET on TSN.

Complementing
FAVELA UNITED is Westhead’s long-form
magazine story about street soccer culture in one the most dangerous places in
the world – where most young girls grow up under the threat of gang violence
and drug trafficking.

Westhead’s
accompanying story is featured on TSNOriginal.ca, a brand new web experience that combines
atmospheric sound, photos, and videos to bring readers into lives of the girls
living in the favelas.

Launching
today,TSNOriginal.ca marks the network’s first foray into
digital storytelling and serves as its new digital model for long-form,
magazine-style sports journalism.

“The goal of our Original Features is to elevate the FIFA WOMEN’S
WORLD CUP CANADA 2015™with strong storytelling, and there’s no better
example of that than FAVELA UNITED,” said Ken Volden, Vice-President and
Executive Producer, News and Information, TSN. “Rick’s essay presented the perfect
opportunity to explore digital storytelling, and we’re very excited by the
result, as well as the many future possibilities offered by our new microsite.”

FAVELA UNITED investigates the positive impact of
street soccer culture upon girls growing up in extreme poverty in the most
dangerous neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro, known as favelas. In these urban
slums, violent conflict between local police and drug traffickers is a daily
occurrence, and children are commonly used as drug runners. Amid the gunfire,
girls’ soccer programs offer a glimmer of hope, and an escape from being forced
into the drug trade.

FAVELA
UNITED is directed by Canadian Screen Award-winning Senior Feature Producer
Josh Shiaman, who oversaw the creation of more than 40 features surrounding the
FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP CANADA 2015™.

CTV and TSN’s
Original Features airing in the pre-game shows of select games explore some of
the most compelling stories in women’s soccer.

CTV and
TSN’s complete slate of more than 40 Original Features from the FIFA WOMEN’S
WORLD CUP CANADA 2015™will be made available across CTV and
TSN platforms, airing in SPORTSCENTRE,
on CTV affiliates across the country, and on-demand through TSN Digital
platforms including TSN GO and TSN.ca/FIFA.

TSN, CTV, and
RDS are official broadcasters of FIFA events from 2015 to 2026, including the
FIFA World Cup™ in 2018, 2022, and 2026.

FIFA
WOMEN’S WORLD CUP CANADA 2015™on TSN and CTV

Television: CTV, TSN, and RDS’s exclusive live
coverage of all 52 matches from the FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP CANADA 2015™ continues with four matches today(Saturday, June 13), beginning with France vs. Colombia at 1
p.m. ET on TSN and RDS.

Taking
place in six cities across Canada (Edmonton, Moncton, Montréal, Ottawa,
Vancouver, and Winnipeg), the FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP CANADA 2015™
culminates with the Final on Sunday, July 5 at 7 p.m. ET on CTV/RDS at BC Place
in Vancouver.

Live Streaming: In addition to live television coverage of all 52
games on CTV/TSN, TV subscribers can live stream all games from the FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP CANADA 2015™ on the
corresponding GO platform – CTV GO or TSN GO.

Radio:Canadians can tune in to TSN
Radio’s live coverage of every Canada match, plus Round of 16,
quarter-final, and semifinal matches, and the Final. TSN Radio’s package of
games airs nationally on
the TSN Radio Network presented by Amway Canada.The
following radio stations, listed in order from West to East, will broadcast
live coverage of the FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD
CUP CANADA 2015™:

News
and Analysis:TSN.ca/FIFA is a one-stop shop for everything
surrounding the FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP
CANADA 2015™, featuring news, analysis, and original content from the
tournament.

About CTV

CTV is
Canada's #1 private broadcaster. Featuring a wide range of quality news,
sports, information, and entertainment programming, CTV has been Canada’s
most-watched television network for the past 14 years in a row. CTV is a
division of Bell Media, Canada’s premier multimedia company with leading assets
in television, radio, digital, and Out-of-Home.
Bell Media is owned by BCE Inc. (TSX, NYSE: BCE), Canada’s largest
communications company. More information about CTV can be found on the
network’s website at CTV.ca.

About TSN

TSN
is Canada's Sports Leader and #1 specialty network. With a broad portfolio of
multimedia sports assets, TSN delivers world-class content across its
industry-leading platforms including five national television feeds, TSN.ca, TSN
GO, and TSN
Radiostations across the country. With more championship events than
any broadcaster in the country, TSN’s roster of live sports programming
includes the Grey Cup, IIHF World Junior Championship, FIFA Women’s World Cup
Canada 2015™, CFL, NFL, NBA, MLS, Toronto Maple Leafs, Ottawa Senators,
Winnipeg Jets, Season of Champions Curling, UEFA Euro 2016, MLB, Barclays
Premier League, Golf’s Majors, NASCAR, F1, Grand Slam
Tennis, NCAA March Madness, and Skate Canada and Rugby Canada events. TSN is a
division of Bell Media, which is part of BCE Inc. (TSX, NYSE: BCE), Canada’s
largest communications company.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Radio’s new
pitch line may be how its ads fit with everything else. Like a restaurant goer overwhelmed by too
many items on the salad bar to make a well-balanced plate of ingredients that
go well together, marketers are facing the same problem when it comes to their
media diet. The third annual Cross-Channel Marketing Report, published by
Econsultancy in association with Oracle Marketing Cloud, finds just two-in-five (43%) feel they
understand their customers’ journey throughout their media day and that they’re
putting campaign components together in the right way to reach them.
That’s despite the fact that two-thirds
say it’s a priority for all marketing to be integrated into a cohesive plan.
The most common reason for missing that target is advertisers and ad agencies just don’t have the resources
to achieve that goal. “Clearly, marketers can and should be doing more
to drive precise orchestration of their marketing strategies,” Oracle’s Simon
Robinson says. For radio,
the survey suggests there’s a sizable opening for sales reps in their pitch to
show how radio advertising will fit with other marketing activities.
“Keeping the customer ‘switched on’ to your brand message is more challenging
than ever before,” Robinson says. “Almost a quarter of companies (21%) surveyed believe that the customer
journey is the singular most important factor for a successful campaign.” To
that end, a majority (51%) of companies now say they “focus on the customer,
not the campaign.” The survey of 956 marketers also shows what other reports
have found: interest in digital ads is only growing.

More than half of all audio usage is in-home. The car and the
workplace have emerged as the two listening locations most frequently targeted
by radio programmers. But new research suggests a significant listening
opportunity still exists in the home. When Edison Research looked at the
totality of the audio space – including owned music, streamed audio, podcasts,
TV music channels like Music Choice, and YouTube for music among other things –
it found that more than half of all listening is done in the home. In-car
accounted for a healthy 30%. The research firm says its Share of Ear study
tracks all audio usage, both music and speech-based content, using a fully
representative national sample reflecting the entire population.

Monday, June 8, 2015

Canadian millennials are more
active in sharing on social networks, and engage more with content shared on
their networks than the average population, according to research by Olive
Media.

The Canadian Millennial
Research Study showed that sharing activity reflects an engagement with brands,
and a direct connection to purchase activity. The study tracked online data
from 6.7 million IP addresses, or 95% of 18-to-34 year-old’s in Canada.

Canadians millennials are three
times more likely to share content with their social networks than the average,
and they are more influenced by their peers since they are two times more
likely to click back on content shared by others in their network, according to
the study.

Millennial sharing is also more
diverse across platforms, with Facebook comprising 62%, Twitter 23% and
Reddit 4%. That’s compared with the general population, where sharing largely
takes place on on Facebook (81%). Millennials also share much more on-the-go,
using their smartphones 46% of the time when they share.

Through Olive Media’s
partnership with a 3rd party database, ShareThis was able to collect purchase
data from 33 leading retailers and 250 brands. The company tracked and matched
online social behaviour by connecting their database information and store
loyalty programs to ShareThis unique IDs. The report was able to track 1.2
million offline purchases. Based on this data, millennials who share content
about electronics are 2.4 times more likely to make electronic purchases, and
those who share about food and drink and 2.1 times more likely to act on their
sharing.

The study also revealed that
millennials use different social networks for different topics. For instance,
they are more 4.8 times more likely to have a conversation about consumer electronics
on Reddit than the general population. They use Facebook and Pinterest more
commonly to share about food.

Monday, June 1, 2015

Content
group's new initiative will partner with advertisers on editorial content

Chris
Powell June 01, 2015

Rogers
Media’s publishing unit has introduced a content marketing offering
that will include the names of advertisers on the cover and table of contents
of both its English and French titles.

Unilever
Canada and Lexus/Toyota are among the program’s first advertisers, the latter
partnering with Maclean’s, L’actualité, Sportsnet Magazine and Canadian
Business on an editorial series that is still in development.

Unilever,
meanwhile, is partnering with Chatelaine on a program promoting the
Hellmann’s “Real food movement” that will appear in the magazine’s July issue.
Several other deals are currently “on the one-yard line” said Christopher
Loudon, director of content solutions with the publishing unit.

Loudon
told Marketing that advertisers’ cover presence is restricted to text
attached to a headline. There are no plans to incorporate advertiser-related
imagery.

The
initiative opens up an editorial environment historically off-limits to
advertisers. The package can include additional pages of adjacent advertising.
Loudon did not disclose specifics on rates.

The
new offering features all of the hallmarks of sponsored content, with content
developed by Rogers’ editorial teams with advertisers’ objectives in mind. The
plan is to have content be labelled as “presented in partnership with” and to
be written and edited with no advertiser input.

Rogers
began developing the program in February, with the first client presentation
occurring in April. In that time, the company’s senior executives met with
publishers and editors to determine what Loudon described as “the rules of
engagement” for the program.

“For
them this is quite a step forward… and the [100%] agreement around the table
was that this is not only an essential evolution, but an important revolution,”
he said. “They’re used to doing co-branded and advertorial content, and they
understand that this is a logical amplification that is not only breakthrough,
but essential.”

Steve
Maich, senior vice-president and general manager, publishing for
Rogers Media (which owns Marketing), said it is important for publishers
to be proactive as print advertising revenues continue to fall.

In
its most recent ad spend forecast, global media services firm ZenithOptimedia
noted that erosion of Canadian print magazine advertising “accelerated” in
2014, falling 15.5% to $483 million following moderate declines in the previous
three years. The report called for further erosion of 10% per year through
2017, when magazine spending will stand at $350 million.

Maich
said it is imperative for publishers to tackle the problem head-on. “Given the
rapidly changing media landscape, and [the] impact it’s had on the advertising
business model, I would have grave misgivings about sitting back and doing
nothing as print readership continues to decline and print ad budgets wither.

“I
think it’s my job to keep looking for ways to work with advertisers so that our
brands thrive financially, remain competitive, and can continue to produce
great stories and vital journalism that serve the needs of our readers. If I
wasn’t doing that, I wouldn’t be doing my job.”

Falling
ad revenues have made publishers more receptive to advertising that pushes the
traditional boundaries of church and state. U.S. publisher Time Inc. introduced cover ads last year, permitting
small ads near the mailing label on titles including Time and Sports
Illustrated.

While
Maich said being on the cover and table of contents can provide “immeasurable
value” for advertisers, he said the program’s true value is in advertisers’
ability to work collaboratively with Rogers editors to develop content that
aligns with the publisher’s major editorial pillars.

The
section relating to covers in the “Advertisers” section reads: “No
advertisement may be promoted on cover of the magazine or included in the
editorial table of contents, unless it involves an editorially directed
contest, promotion or sponsored one-off editorial extra.”

A
separate section, relating to special advertising sections, reads: “No special
advertising section may be promoted on the publication’s cover or included in
the editorial table of contents.”

Maich
said those guidelines were developed for what made sense for the publishing
industry at the time, and need to be updated to reflect the evolution of the
publishing landscape.

“We
know that maintaining the trust of our readers is paramount, and to me that
means full transparency and honesty with readers on our relationships with
advertisers, which we’re committed to doing,” he said. “Once a media brand
adheres to this, you can then continue to innovate with clients to deliver
effective messages that both meet their business objectives and deliver
compelling stories to audiences.”

Loudon,
meanwhile, predicted that directed content would eventually eclipse standard
ROP advertising as advertisers move away from an advertising model that has
favoured proximity to compelling content to being part of the content itself.

As
the country’s largest magazine publisher, Loudon acknowledged that Rogers could
potentially be ushering in a new era for print advertising.

“Obviously
the industry is going to take notice and either react in kind or come up with
its own version of content,” said Loudon. “It will be an interesting growth
period.”